Description:
This indicator is intended to demonstrate one dimension of the quality of public services, namely satisfaction (not necessarily the same as quality) and provide an overview rather than detail on specific sectors.
Satisfaction will be measured in relation to three specific types of public services where Scottish Government have a policy interest and where they have a high public importance – health services, public transport and schools.
Source of Data:
The figures for this indicator come from the Scottish Household Survey (SHS) which is a National Statistics product. Scottish Government are the owners of the data.
Data for this indicator is published in the Scottish Household Survey Annual Report, which can be found here. An interactive data explorer for the SHS can be found here.
The indicator on satisfaction with public services is derived using the question below from the Scottish Household Survey (SHS). This question was introduced into the survey in 2007. It asks:
"Overall, how satisfied or dissatisfied are you with each of these public services?" and then lists eight public services to give opinions on. The three that are used for this indicator are local health services, local schools and public transport. For each service, the respondent could say:
- Very satisfied
- Fairly satisfied
- Neither Satisfied nor Dissatisfied
- Fairly Dissatisfied
- Very Dissatisfied
- No Opinion
The indicator represents the percentage of adults who said that they were very or fairly satisfied with all three services, excluding any for which they chose to give "no opinion". So, if a respondent said they were satisfied with local health services and public transport, but had no opinion about local schools (perhaps because they do not use that service) they are counted as being satisfied with the services in their area. The same applies for other combinations of satisfaction and no opinion, except for the small percentage of respondents who answered "no opinion" to all three and therefore were excluded from the analysis.
Definitions:
Public services refers to health services, public transport and schools.
Criteria for Change:
- Any difference within +/- 1.5 percentage point of last year's figure suggests that the position is more likely to be maintaining than showing any change.
- An increase of 1.5 percentage point or more suggests the position is improving
- a decrease of 1.5 percentage point or more suggests the position is worsening